Your Life Is Theirs

Very occasionally, a bit of truth escapes even the craftiest politician. One such rarity has emerged from the battle between New York’s thugs and those at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) over who gets how much of the loot they steal from us.

DHS confessed last week that it “plans to drastically cut security funding” for New York City, as the Staten Island Advance put it. That prompted caterwauls from every two-bit pol who can possibly claim control over the five boroughs as well as this confession from New York’s nanny – sorry, mayor, Michael Bloomberg: “I would never think the city should not get more funding.”

Yep, you read that right. No matter how much Our Masters despoil us, it’s never enough. Trillions upon trillions poured down government’s rat hole, yet the rodents are never satisfied, never glutted, never abashed for even a moment at their avarice and theft. Instead, they voraciously hunt more victims and plunder.

We all knew this, of course. Greed to make Midas blush and thievery are the State’s essence. But how obliging of Nanny to confirm it!

Never mind that “New York City is by far the biggest recipient of Department of Homeland Security funds,” nor that it also “got $100 million through the stimulus,” as the White House was quick to point out. Nanny and his accomplices demand more as they play one of a politician’s two roles: either actively robbing us, or begging his “fair share” from the rest of the gang. “The fact that the Obama administration would cut New York’s homeland security funding just 11 days after the Times Square car bomb attempt is dangerous and unconscionable,” whined Rep. Pete King (R-NY). Aw, come on, Pete: systematically stripping New Yorkers of their Second-Amendment rights so we can’t defend ourselves from terrorists, whether governmental or free-lance – now that’s dangerous and unconscionable. Squabbling over the booty is just politics.

By now you’ve probably suspected that your definition of “drastically” differs a tad from the Staten Island Advance’s. We’re talking a decrease of a mere 26% from last year’s stratospheric $198 million, so that New York’s bureaucracy must make do with only $145 million. Perhaps a few of its Warriors on Terror will have to relinquish their “black Suburbans” and hoof it like the rest of us. No doubt news of such martial weakness already has Al Qaeda planning a beachhead at Battery Park.

Meanwhile, those of us languishing in New York’s Police State can only hope this modest reduction curtails some of its unconstitutional silliness, such as its warrantless searches of folks intrepid enough to brave the subways or its “surges”: “You’ll see surges of police officers all of a sudden, heavily armed, that appear … in a quiet, nice neighborhood,” Nanny admitted a few years ago on 60 Minutes. “Surges” often leave the quiet, nice neighbors quaking – and indeed, Nanny explained that “the purpose of it all is to intimidate.” Hmmm. Maybe he’s on a truth-telling jag, because unless terrorists have chosen that particular moment to case that particular area, “surges” intimidate no one but us.

Whether or not Nanny et al can extort that extra $53 million out of their federal counterparts, New York is already a totalitarian’s dream. Since 9/11, its rulers have “spent billions of dollars on security upgrades, some visible and others undetectable to locals. There are bomb-sniffing dogs and police checking [sic for ‘searching without a warrant’] subway riders’ bags. There are signs urging people to report ‘suspicious’ activities. There are checkpoints on bridges. There is a counter-terrorism bureau and intelligence division established by Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly … Operating from precincts in New York as well as Paris;” – alas, DHS’s niggardliness may gyp some of our hard-working public servants out of springtime in Gay Paree next year – “Tel Aviv; Amman, Jordan, and other foreign posts; the 1,000 agents speak 50 languages, including Urdu, Pashto, Arabic and Persian. Surveillance equipment can scrutinize anything, whether license plates or tattoos.” Whew! I’ll sleep better tonight knowing that Officer Sanchez over at Counter-Terrorism can scan the gridlock at New York’s intersections for expired tags.

Our Rulers also installed a “‘ring of steel’ in Lower Manhattan, outfitting a 1.5-square-mile area with 3,000 surveillance cameras and radiation detectors. City and state officials are pushing Washington to provide an additional $24 million to expand the protective barrier [sic for ‘automated Stasi’] to Midtown…” Yet Nanny has the nerve to prattle, “There is a balance between being so safe you can’t go out of your house, and enjoying freedom – freedom to come and go, and to talk and to be in charge of your own destiny.” Shameless, isn’t he?

And what do these buffoons do with the fortune the Feds re-distribute from our pockets to theirs? Well, a few evenings ago, they blew up a gardener’s car with it. “A couple of 5-gallon gas cans in the back seat of a car parked in Union Square last night brought the area to a screeching halt, prompting the evacuation of 600 people and briefly trapping hundreds of punk-rock fans attending a concert at Irving Plaza.”

Seems one of Con Ed’s employees “noticed” the cans and called the cops – naturally. Good Amerikans who see something say something, even if they don’t know what they’re talking about. There are about a million reasons a guy might carry gas cans in his car, and none of them has anything to do with terrorism; in this case, he fills his lawn mower from them. Perhaps that’s yet another reason the Founding Fathers prohibited warrantless searches: so that ignorant busybodies like this snitch can’t make life miserable for the rest of us. “Within moments,… Bomb Squad experts swarmed the area,” rousting those “quiet, nice” neighbors Nanny loves to bully out of bed and ordering them to evacuate their buildings. Then the “experts” destroyed the car’s windows “with two controlled blasts”; why investigate first when you can have fun blowing up a serf’s property and there’s not a dang thing he can do about it? The unfortunate owner returned at midnight, “none too happy… ‘What happened! What happened!’ he kept asking police. ‘What’s wrong? I didn’t do anything.’”